


Is that your final answer?

by gwendee



Category: Assassination Classroom
Genre: Crushes, Fluff, High School, Humor, M/M, Oblivious, Post-Canon, Romantic Comedy, Slice of Life, Teasing, bad analogies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 19:11:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18597637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwendee/pseuds/gwendee
Summary: One of them’s in love and doesn’t know, the other knows it and doesn’t act on it.Gakushuu’s in full-on, fluttery, warm love, and he’s enjoying every single moment of it.He’d spent the first three days of the initial realization going through all five stages of grief simultaneously, then the next week panicking about his next steps and whatever course of action he should take in to further their relationship and success rate of each one.Then Gakushuu sobers up. A floaty feeling comes over him, his thoughts swim most pleasantly and he starts blushing in his own room, and then, thinks, why the fuck would he need to do anything?





	Is that your final answer?

**Author's Note:**

> This is for DragonMarker who gave me a fic prompt in one of their comments on Blink ! I found it interesting and decided to do a little twist on the normally oblivious-character trope that I love. I'm pretty open to any fic prompts/requests so shoot me anything! I love a challenge.

**Is that your final answer?**

_ One of them’s in love and doesn’t know, the other knows it and doesn’t act on it. _

Gakushuu’s in full-on, fluttery, warm love, and he’s enjoying every single moment of it.

Sure, he’d spent the first three days of the initial realization going through all five stages of grief simultaneously, then the next week panicking about his next steps and whatever course of action he should take in to further their relationship and success rate of each one. He watches romantic comedies and romantic dramas stressfully, scours books of the related genre and finds them absolutely useless, and deliberates, for a brief moment, asking his father for help. 

Then Gakushuu sobers up, in which he goes “what the fuck I’m not asking fucking Gakuhou for help” and gives himself a shocking spray of water to the face and then presses his hand to his heart and feels it beat erratically. A floaty feeling comes over Gakushuu, his thoughts swim most pleasantly and he starts blushing in his own room, and then, thinks, why the fuck would he need to do anything? 

There were so many pros and cons and uncertainties that went into a confession, and he wasn’t going to fall out of love anytime soon. He should just live the moment, enjoy the happy thoughts and stock up on serotonin and dopamine and oxytocin. There was no need to change the status quo, fuck whatever western media was trying to feed into him.

But there was still a bunch of things to take care of, and Gakushuu decides to waste no time and tick off the first on the list. He calls up Ren, who’s a little irritable at being woken up by a call at 8am in the morning but Gakushuu had already showered after his morning run and he’s still a little high on the adrenaline.

“I have something to tell you,” Gakushuu starts seriously, which in hindsight isn’t the best way to start a conversation and Ren’s immediately wide awake and freaking out a little on his end of the line, expecting Gakushuu to drop some major truth bomb about how he finally confronted his father in some Zuko-Ozai showdown and now needs a place to live after being disowned.

“It’s not like that,” Gakushuu says, and when he divulges the true intentions of the call Ren freaks out again, for an entirely different reason this time, and Gakushuu lets himself enjoy his friend’s frantic blubbering. When Ren finally calms down, he asks, “what are you going to do?”

“Nothing,” Gakushuu says peacefully.

“...Nothing?” Ren echoes, skeptical, “most people decide to either ignore their feelings or acknowledge them, and since you’re here telling me I assume you’ve decided to go with the latter path, so a confession-”

“Oh, I’m not going to confess,” Gakushuu says, swinging his legs over the side of his bed, “that’s far too risky, and there’s no need, really. I’m acknowledging my feelings, and I’ll live with it.”

“...So you’re just going to pine forever?”

“It’s not pining if I don’t need them to like me back,” Gakushuu says, he doesn’t blame Ren’s narrow worldview on the subject; Ren has always been a romantic at heart and fills his head with the ramblings of romance novels and happily ever afters and riding off into the sunset with a metaphorical white horse. He doesn’t need that, Gakushuu attempts to explain, he’s perfectly content just feeling the feelings and being happy with his love.

Having it returned was just a fuss, Gakushuu says, because then they had to get into a relationship and there were more things to worry about. “It’s like reality television,” Gakushuu says, “I don’t have to be on the gameshow, I’m enjoying myself just watching it.”

“That’s the weirdest analogy someone has ever tried to explain falling in love to me,” Ren mutters, “but you know, Gakushuu, I’ve never truly managed to figure you out and I don’t think I ever will. I wish you good luck in your, uh, gameshow watching. Thank you for telling me, but if you’re not asking for advice on how to confess, why did you tell me?”

“Have you ever tried to watch a gameshow alone?” Gakushuu says, “entertaining, sure, but it’s only a remarkable experience if you can watch it with someone else.”

“I see where this is going,” Ren says, highly amused now, “you need someone to gossip to.”

Gakushuu closes his eyes. “I do,” he admits, a little dreamily, and Ren snickers over the line. 

So Gakushuu remains in fluttering happy love, and he rests his cheek against his hand and watches as Akabane goes off about something or another with such passionate fury in his eyes that make them light up, and Gakushuu briefly tunes in to register that Akabane is about partway through expressing his opinion on disposable bamboo chopsticks that you were supposed to snap in two.

“They don’t even break cleanly,” Akabane stresses, “why not just manufacture separate chopsticks and put two together?!”

“Then you need packaging to hold the two separate chopsticks together,” Gakushuu says, not quite as invested in the conversation as Akabane was but was most interested in continuing it. It works, and Akabane slams the table in anger and starts ranting about stupidity of the general human population and “they’re all stuffed in a giant box anyways! Just grab two! One pair of two sticks, is that so goddamn hard-”

He’s so cute, Gakushuu thinks, and he makes deliberate eye-contact with Ren, who rolls his eyes.

“Hey!” Akabane pokes him, sounding offended, “pay attention to me when I’m breaking down flawed product designs.”

Gladly. “They’re wooden chopsticks,” Gakushuu deadpans, because that’s just how it is and because he knows how exactly to get a rise out of Akabane. It works, Akabane throws his hands up in exasperation and aggressively stabs holes Gakushuu’s bento with said wooden chopsticks, asymmetrically splintered at the top.

The day after that Gakushuu buys one of those portable cutlery casings with a reusable fork and spoon and chopstick with a tiny little sun pattern, but there was no way Gakushuu was going to tell Akabane it was because he reminded him of the sunset with his red hair and bright eyes and warm disposition, because that aligned poorly with Gakushuu’s goals of loving said boy in secret.

“Oh,” Akabane says, cheeks turning the slightest bit pinkish, and Gakushuu.feels his toes curl. “Thanks,” Akabane murmurs. 

Be still, heart. “So you shut up during lunch,” Gakushuu drawls, and his fingertips tingle a little from where Akabane’s hands brushed against them. Akabane shoots him a challenging look, “bold of you to assume I’d run out of things to talk about,” and Gakushuu doesn’t regret being in love one bit.

Akabane stays blissfully oblivious, the way Gakushuu is enjoying it, but his other friends are not. “This is an intervention,” Seo says seriously, and from behind the trio Ren shrugs helplessly.

“I don’t know how to start this,” Araki says, “but you’re our friend, Asano, we care about you, and we want you to be happy, and-”

“It looks like you like Karma Akabane,” Koyama interrupts, and ignores Seo as he gets jabbed in the ribs, “as in, like in a romantic interest way. There are rumors circulating about it, because of how much time you’re spending with each other, and we want to clear the air with you so you don’t get cornered by any of those gossipers. We can just say to anyone who asks that you both are good friends-”

“I do like Akabane,” Gakushuu says.

Koyama’s mouth clicks shut. Ren closes his eyes and mumbles a quick prayer, and Seo says, “what?”

“I do like Akabane, in a romantic interest way,” Gakushuu says plainly, “but he’s not supposed to know about it.”

Ren opens his eyes and squares his shoulders, and then starts reciting Gakushuu’s strange gameshow reality-television analogy while looking highly baffled himself, and in the end the four are in thoughtful silence and Gakushuu waits for them to get their bearings together.

“So to get this straight,” Araki says, ignoring Seo’s “but they’re not”, “you just want to quietly pine, I’m sorry, crush on Akabane, from the sidelines. Because you’re having fun and you see no reason to complicate it any further.”

“Essentially, yes,” Gakushuu says. 

“That’s… kind of nice, I guess,” Koyama says.

“It’s been a great three months,” Gakushuu shrugs.

“Wait, it’s been three months?” 

Gakushuu counts off in his head. “About three months. And a week.”

Ren thinks. “You told me a week late?”

“That was my panic week,” Gakushuu dismisses.  

“So what are you going to do?” Koyama says.

Gakushuu glares at him a little. “Didn’t you hear me? Nothing.”

There’s a pause, and then Seo says, “your secret is safe with us, boss!”

Gakushuu rolls his eyes and then goes to the library, where Akabane is at their usual table and pretending to not study. He gives Gakushuu a quick flash of his irises and teeth and then goes back to pretending to sleep, and Gakushuu pours over his books. A while later the rest of the virtuosos join them and Akabane groans in mock-dramatism as he shifts his seat from across Gakushuu to commander the empty space on his left, and the unsubtle assholes exchange glances with each other that Akabane narrows his eyes at.

But luckily Gakushuu has terrible taste in boys and Akabane is just so stupidly oblivious.

Gakushuu finally looks up from his book when Ren kicks him under the table for the fifth time, and he notices the stares from the students milling around the library. Akabane’s draped over the entirety of Gakushuu’s left side and has his head tucked in the crook of Gakushuu’s neck as he dozes, and Gakushuu’s fingers itch to brush his fringe away from his eyes and kiss the space between his eyes.

Gakushuu rolls his eyes and shrugs Akabane off, who blinks bearily and mutters a soft “sorry”, then purposely stretches and smacks Gakushuu in the face. 

“Idiot,” Gakushuu says fondly, and smacks him back..

\--

Karma’s NOT an idiot. He knows something’s going on, he does, and for the seventh time today Seo kicks Koyama under the table. If anything, Asano’s the idiot, blissfully oblivious to the roughhousing that the Virtuosos are having and engrossed in his notes. 

Karma scowls into his forearm and thinks. Aside from Asano, Sakakibara likes him best, but he’s harder to wheedle information out of because of his principles, and the fact that anyone who is a genuine friend of Asano was effective at dodging manipulative questions. Araki probably knew the most with his wallflower-type and his acute observational skills but he was hard to intimidate. Seo was a loudmouth that would probably drop hints about whatever was going on and Koyama was still terrified of Karma no matter how much he tried to hide it, so they were the best options.

When the bell rings to tell the general school population to leave, Karma puts his plan into action.

“He-ey, Koyama,” Karma says, grinning to show off his canines and delighting when Koyama’s eyes widen a fraction, “we never really talk, do we? We’ve known each other since middle school but we’ve never really had a conversation.”   
“Haven’t we?” Koyama says, frantic. 

“Where’s this coming from, Akabane?” Sakakibara asks.

“We-ell it’s just an observation,” Karma says, “we should all go out sometime. Meet each other outside of school, whaddya say? Quality bonding time between friends.”

“Who said we were friends?” Asano deadpans. 

Karma fake-pouts. “Aww, Shuuey, don’t you love me? I love you.”

Asano turns to give Karma the most unimpressed look in the history of Kunugigaoka. Lesser men have cried in the face of Gakushuu Asano’s deathly bored eyebrows, just from the shame alone of disappointing their glorious leader. Karma grins at him.

He doesn’t miss the way Koyama’s mouth opens, or the elbow Araki delivers to Seo’s stomach. What were they hiding?

“You hurt me, Shuuey” Karma sighs. He really does enjoy getting a rise out of Asano, seeing his exasperated expressions send a sort of pride through Karma, knowing that he’s the only one who manages to annoy him into showing human emotions.  

“Don’t call me that,” Asano says, and ignores him. Karma turns his sights to the other four and bares his teeth in a threatening smile, and Seo involuntarily takes a step back.

“I think,” Sakakibara says loudly, “the bell has rung, and we should take our leave.” He hurries over to Asano’s side and leans in close to him to whisper something, and Asano pushes him away gently with a little huff of a laugh, and Karma briefly wonders what he must do to get a reaction like that out of Asano. Sure, the amused-aggravated look that Asano seems to wear most of the time is reserved specially for Karma, but Sakakibara gets the soft fond laughs and the secretive smiles and Karma wonders if he’ll ever be that close of a friend to Asano.

They’ve bonded pretty much over two years, but it’s nothing on the friendship that Sakakibara and Asano share. 

“How long have they known each other?” Karma asks.

“Hm?” Araki looks up and blinks in confusion, then traces Karma’s line of sight. “Them? First year of middle-school, I guess. We all met then. But they sat next to each other and became friends, and the rest of us were pulled in when the first examination rankings came up and we all got the second place of each of the subjects.” 

“Second place,” Karma repeats quietly, thinking, “oh, Asano got first for everything then, didn’t he?”

“Except math,” Araki says, “I mean, he’s great at math, but he sucks at it. He tied with me, actually.”

“Huh,” says Karma, “fucking nerd.”

But whatever secret the Virtuosos were harboring seemed to get bigger, and Karma knew it had something to do with him with the glances and whispers and Seo looking like he’s about to burst with juicy gossip whenever Karma stares at him, but for the life of him he just couldn’t figure out what. 

Karma had once managed to corner Koyama in between classes and stared him down, but he had freaked out, recited chemical equations that distracted Karma enough to leave an opening, and then literally sprinted away. Seo had blabbed something about being on a gameshow, which, what? Did Karma end up on an episode of the Truman Show without knowing?

“Do you watch gameshows, Asano?” Karma asks loudly one afternoon.

Seo splutters in his drink. Asano gives Karma a befuddled expression. “What?”

The other four were slowly turning various colours of non-human, which hilariously reminded Karma of Koro-sensei. Asano continues to look mildly confused and remains a wonderfully human colour, and Karma strikes him off, again, on the suspect list. 

Asano’s been struck of three times already. How can someone so smart be so absolutely clueless? At least Karma knows something is up, even if he doesn’t know what exactly is, for now.

It’s kind of cute, honestly.

“A gameshow,” Karma repeats, “what’s your favourite?”

“I don’t watch gameshows,” Asano says boredly. 

“Have you tried watching it with someone else?” Karma says, “it’s a lot more fun, when you have someone to laugh about it with.”

Sakakibara does an actual spittake and dissolves into hapless giggles. Asano’s eyes widen at him. “The hell, Ren?”

“That was,” Sakakibara says, breathless, “fucking hilarious.”

It really wasn’t. Seo and Koyama and Araki start laughing to themselves.

“What the hell,” Asano mutters, “idiots.”

Maybe that’s why Asano doesn’t realize anything. He just dismisses whatever strange behaviour his companions produce as the idiotic quirks of his minions below him. Karma hopes he’s not one of said insignificant people in Asano’s eyes. 

“What do you think of me?” Karma demands one day, sitting on the question for way longer than he needs to and being uncharacteristically anxious of Asano’s opinion of him.

“Why the sudden question?” Asano eyes him with suspicion.

“Just wondering,” Karma says, aiming for casual. Asano tilts his head and considers the question for a long moment, then says with the upmost of sincerity, “you’re okay, I guess.”

And Karma’s… disappointed. Wow, he did not expect to feel disappointed and he very much thinks that Asano’s answer should be expected, but…

“Just okay?” Karma’s shoulders slump. Maybe it’s the way Asano delivers it, the uninterested tone of voice. Karma prides himself on being  _ interesting _ , thank you very much, and logically he knows that Asano’s just a hard person to please and he was probably lying about Karma  _ not  _ being his absolute BFF just because he was Asano, but still. Hearing that he was just okay sucked whether or not Asano meant it.

His emotions must show on his face, because two blinks later Asano looks conflicted, then one more and he looks a little irritated. Then Asano says, “stop looking at me like that, idiot. I accept only the best,” he pauses, “and you’re acceptable.”

“That’s,” Karma blinks, “honestly, the nicest thing you’ve said to me.”

And there it was, a little quirk of Asano’s lips and a private twinkle of his eye and the small huff of a laugh that fills Asano’s cheeks with a bit of color. 

Ba-dum, ba-dum, goes Karma’s heart. He really wants to see that smile again.

It’s no longer being on the same level as Sakakibara is, (although Karma still delights to know that he’s also on the exclusive in Asano’s-cute-little-laugh club), but Karma has a special mission now. He does go over to Sakakibara because he’s childish enough for petty things like this, and he says “I’m better than you now” without any form of prior context, and gets the equivalent of “???” as a reply.

But it’s his mission now, so he bugs Asano incessantly and drops little compliments and goes off on tangents in his rants and blurts out funny pick-up lines he gets off the internet, and he still gets the unimpressed look more often than not but every once in a while Karma gets rewarded with the little grin and the light laugh and it’s great.

In the middle of his recount of his and Asano’s conversation during break, when Karma’s balancing on the railings against the bleachers with Rukiyo hanging off on one side and Kabaya perched on another, Kabaya says, “I didn’t know you had a crush on Asano,” and Karma loses his balance and falls off.

Karma says rather futilely,”I do not have a crush on him!” And makes an indignant noise at Rukiyo’s, “you didn’t? He was being so obvious,” but then Karma thinks, and then the realization falls on him harder than he has, and oh shit. He does have a crush, a huge one at that.

And then much, much later, nursing the bruise on the back of his forehead with a bag of frozen peas from the back of his freezer, Karma groans in mortification because the Virtuosos fucking knew all along, and he was the stupid oblivious one, not them. They knew about his goddamn crush before he did, and yes, watching Karma slowly try to woo Asano without knowing he was must have been as fun as watching a gameshow, wasn’t it, Seo.

Karma’s really, really glad that Asano is stupidly oblivious like him.

Karma confronts the Virtuosos about it, because he’s not the type of person to run away from things, not even something like emotions and crushes. He’s prepared to launch into a whole rant about... how dare they not tell him he had a crush? How dare they notice it? How dare they laugh about it? Well, Karma wasn’t too sure what he was going to rant about but he loved ranting, so he was going to rant about  _ something _ , but then Koyama breaks out into peals of laughter with a “yes!” and Araki snickers and Seo says, “oh good lord, fucking finally” and Sakakibara mutters “six months and two weeks, damn,” and Karma is thrown off.

“Wait,” Karma says, brain still working in full time to process whatever was happening, “you guys… knew, I had a crush on Asano? Right? That’s the secret.”

“That was not the secret,” Seo says, at the same time Sakakibara says, “but you should confess, like, now.” 

And then it makes sense.

Because, Karma thinks, giddy on adrenaline and high on love or endorphins or whatever as he dashes through the school hallways and looks down corridors left and right, if they weren’t teasing Karma about his crush, then it was the other way around. 

Which means, Karma comes to an abrupt stop and grins when he sees Asano talking to Masami and Fukada by the 2-C classrooms, Asano had a crush on him.

“Shuuey!” Karma calls loudly, and Asano turns that mildly-irritated look at him  Karma stalks forward and gets up all into Asano’s personal space, grinning wider when he steps back a little in shock but Karma already has a grip on his forearm, and Karma leans forward cups Asano’s jaw with his free hand and presses a solid kiss on his lips.

Masami and Fukada scream.   

“Took you long enough,” Asano murmurs when they part, and Karma winks at the two blushing girls, and then looks at Asano.

“Is that your final answer?” He says, in his best impersonation of a gameshow host, and Asano sighs longsufferingly as if Karma had just handed him a great burden.

“I hate you,” Asnao says.

The mixture of the fond exasperation and the cute little laugh, the aggravation and amusement and irritation and affection all rolled into one; that one, Karma decides, is his favourite expression to put on Asano’s face. 

“I don’t,” Karma says, and leans in again.  

**Author's Note:**

> :o:o:o
> 
> Let me know what you think! Heheh


End file.
